The best bike path in the Culver City area is the Ballona Creek Bikeway, which lets you cycle all the way to the beach while staying completely separate from automobile traffic. Put in at the Duquesne entrance, just north of Jefferson Boulevard – there’s ample free parking, and you get to start by coasting down the ramp past the Rivers of The World mural.

Bike path view.

From there to there to the beach it’s about seven miles, which takes a typical cyclist 30-40 minutes each way. What’s fun is that there are plenty of small hills, even though you’re following the waterway, and some pretty significant scenery changes. Weekdays you’ll have it mostly to yourself, but weekends it draws some serious cyclists – many say they’ve come all the way from the South Bay, or from Santa Monica. I sometimes do this with my friend Anne – we’re proud of ourselves if we just make it to the beach and back!!

Getting close to the ocean.

When you get out past the Ballona Wetlands, you’ll get a pretty spectacular view of Marina del Rey on the right, and then you’ll be alongside the channel used for training by UCLA and other college rowing teams. The bike path merges at that point with the famous beach bike trail. You reach the ocean at the bridge between Marina del Rey and Playa del Rey.